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Phoenix Roadster weaves bamboo into biodegradable vehicle

Bamboo offers plenty of advantages over traditional manufacturing materials. Besides being a fast-growing plant that can be produced in a range of environments, bamboo can be impressively strong and rigid. Filipino designer Kenneth Cobonpue and German product designer Albercht Birkner have teamed up to create a new concept that aims to explore the possibilities of bamboo in modern vehicle manufacturing. The Phoenix Bamboo Car is hewn from bamboo, steel and nylon, and it took the concept's workers 10 days to complete the vehicle's assembly.

The shell is woven to maintain the appearance of a leaf, and the designers say that the average life span of the project is projected to be around five years. That may seem short, but the designers say that the time period is approximately how long current car owners keep a vehicle.

The project does seem to have some details to sort out, however. We shudder to think of the overall environmental product impact of out-right replacing a vehicle every five years instead of allowing it to soldier on in the used market, and there are certainly safety concerns to be weighed as well. Still, the Phoenix Bamboo Car is a beautiful design, and we certainly wouldn't mind seeing manufacturers use a higher volume of renewable materials in their products.

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Oh, come on, Spec, Ernie, cut the designers some slack! It's an interesting exercise in building with renewable materials. For thousands of years Bamboo has been used in the Far East as a replacement for steel. Obviously, the little model is an artistic concept vehicle intended to intrigue imaginations as to the possibilities of Bamboo in vehicle construction. Some of this renewable material research is already incorporated in auto manufacture, especially by Ford Motors.

1st, very cool build. As a practical car, I would make these changes: Make it a 4 wheel vehicle with a wider but thin front-end. Make the frame out of fiberglass or carbon fiber. All it is are 'fabric' sheets infused with epoxy. They do have soy or hemp based plastic panels that could be molded in this shape as well. Have a frame, rollcage and shocks made out of aluminum. Use some basic glass and simple interior, maybe a hard top that can be removed to turn it into a convertible...